Data-Visualization-Portfolio

Part III: Final Project

Data Story Shorthand 🎬

Summary 📖

Part I

I started the project by highlighting the high-level summary, identifying the reader’s objective, and laying down the project structure in terms of setup, conflict, and resolution.

After this, I created the story arc for my presentation and sketched the ebbs and flows of how I want to drive the audience’s emotions.

Next, I prepared initial sketches based on the story’s main elements.

I identified the tools I would use for creating various storyboard elements like Shorthand for presenting, Tableau for visualizations, and Canva for creating custom visuals.

I wrapped up Part I by specifying the call-to-action items.

The in-class peer feedback helped me identify elements I could improve in Part II.

Part II

I created the visualizations in Tableau and laid out the initial storyboard draft in Shorthand.

I also created a mood board to visualize whether the pictures I picked and the color scheme were in sync with the overall mood of the topic delivery.

After identifying the target audience, I also created a script for conducting user research. The interviewees were chosen to accommodate as much diversity as possible.

Questions were centered around:

Context: whether they track their social media usage
Audience: who would be the general audience in their opinion
Content: effectiveness of content delivery
Key Takeaways: whether they find anything surprising or confusing
Visuals: whether the charts help to grasp the information presented

In-class peer feedback for this section helped identify several key points I would like to accommodate in Part III to help the audience understand the storyflow more effectively.

Part III

For the final deliverable, I focused on accommodating feedback from the Course Professor, Teaching Assistant, interviewees, and my classmates.

The changes I made were centered around the following:

Modifying the Tableau visualizations to stitch well with the format on Shorthand.
Shuffling the story layout to make the storyflow more logical.
Re-aligning and adding chart elements to make them more readable.

Final data story 🎥

Changes I made since the completion of Part II ⚙️

I re-ordered the storyboard elements to improve the flow based on the in-class peer feedback. I found this suggestion particularly useful.
I changed some of the background images to make the pages eye-catching.

I changed the page’s format by making the background of text boxes darker so the text could be easier to read.

I added subtitles to make the charts more descriptive. I specified the time frame during which the notification data was captured.

I improved the legend to add more context to the visualizations. The interest level for mobile phone addiction wasn’t easy to understand, per the TA’s feedback. So I added high and low to provide context about the scale that Google Trends adopted.

I improved the color scheme of the charts to be more coherent and consistent with the mood board.

I highlighted certain words in the title to emphasize the critical message.

The audience 👥

Since my interviewees agreed with my initial idea of the primary target audience, I chose to stick to my initial choice for the final data story.

My primary audience consists mainly of young, tech-savvy people who are glued to their screens for work or pleasure or to stay in touch with their BFFs.

I want to educate these people on the perils of too much screen time and get them to disconnect from their gadgets occasionally.

Conducting extensive user research was highly beneficial to me. Knowing the audience helped me in tailoring the right content and doing so will enable me to deliver a presentation that will be more effective.

Narrowing the focus 🔎

I realized that the interviewees were inclined towards learning more about how they could manage their screen time better and wanted access to more resources to help them.

I decided to introduce more call-to-action elements with links to resources to make my final project work for the audience.

Design Decisions 🎨

I stuck by the adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” to tailor my storyboard. I avoided adding a lot of text and maintaining a clean aesthetic that resonated with the audience. They also appreciated that I highlighted the elements of the story with supporting charts and visuals.

Aligning the color scheme with the content theme improved the experience of the storyboard as well. Through this, I could simultaneously reduce eye travel and emphasize the critical message.